Waiting
by tracer2032
Summary: He didn’t end it, he could have. TagAU for Devil's Trap


Waiting

* * *

Stark white walls, sharp clean smell, steady, monotonous beeps piercing stale air ranked with sickness, a still, helpless body mending. It's all too familiar. He's seen it before. He's heard the graying man's diagnosis, seen the lines crease in his forehead as he rattles off the list of what is to be expected or at the very least hoped for.

"But he'll wake up, right?" the question hangs in the air a while and a deep sigh and a mumbled answer of "touch and go" pierces the young dark-haired man's ears before the doctor continues on with his advise for proper treatment.

It doesn't matter, he doesn't listen like he used to. In the past, he'd hung to every word, every mere syllable uttered for condolence and assurance. But now the jargoned phrases are incoherent, washing over his ears. A few pieces latch hold, but their memory is fleeting.

He could chalk it up to his healing head wound, that this all is a result of the stitched gash and its mission to prevent his mind from focusing. But it's not the cut, it's the event that got them here in the first place and whatever words that spill from the knowing man pale in comparison that the thing he loves more than anything being snatched away without a fight and the man he hates and pities is lurking behind the paned glass refusing to enter and face his guilt.

"Do you have any questions?" Sam jerks when the older man reaches out and brushes his shoulder to elicit his attention and slowly shakes his head no. "Alright then, the nurse will be in about 2 hours from now to check on him."

Sam sinks into the hard backed chair that has become his bed, his home, for the past two weeks as he watches the man leave. He grits his teeth, because they all leave. Their empathy stems only from his haggard appearance and not their familiarity with the situation.

The door creaks open again, revealing the man he's sworn to hate. It's hard though, knowing that he is to blame for the cast leg, bruises, patched cuts, and pale complexion the man displays. Sam snaps his head to the side and focuses on the source of his current agony, allowing the feelings of rage to ebb back washing away any remnant of remorse for what he'd done to his father in the name of his brother.

"How's he doing?" Sam shifts his eyes towards the unshaven man struggling to settle down into the opposite chair. He should help, he knows this. But he won't because he's Sam, not Dean, and hardly the good soldier because the role of deserter seems to fit better in the estranged troop society labels as his family.

"Does it matter?" Sam scoffs, letting his eyes take in the battered shell he calls his brother who is all too quiet.

"Yes, Samuel, it does." The answer is weary, but firm. And it angers him.

"It didn't in the cabin." Sam mutters spitefully.

"That wasn't me, son. You know that." A pause. He's thinking, chewing on the statement. Remorse heard? Maybe, or maybe he just wants to believe it's there. "I would nev-"

"You did." The response laced with bitter pain meets the tense air and falls silent the second it does.

He doesn't really mean it. He isn't stupid. He saw the dark chocolate brown eyes become the sickest shade of yellow. They had held his gaze and mocked his weakness, mocked from the mouth of the man who never spoke the word love, but swore he did. And they cut, deep chasms of pain through his heart but he didn't refute them, instead he begged for answers that he really hadn't wished for. And Sam thinks that maybe that's what he hates. Knowledge. Weakness.

He didn't end it, he could've. Those eyes had ordered him to do it, but the pleading pools of green, the broken body drenched red had screamed and stilled his hand. He knew as he knew in that instant, the solution that seemed so easy, and so right, would destroy the crushed form that would bear witness to the vengeful killing.

He hears the scuffling of wood on tile, and the pained grunts as his father seeks to stand. Sam wills himself to avoid glancing the man's way, and shuts his eyes, relishing in the sound as the metal clicks signaling his father's departure as the door falls back in place yet again.

"This wasn't supposed to happen" He cries to his brother, taking the lifeless hand into his own and running his fingers along the still arm like he has every day since he's been allowed access to the ward.

The one-sided conversations soon become two-way as Sam begins to reply to himself. Because he knows what his brother would say. Knows all to well the loving words fused with sarcasm, and the overly perverted comments that make Dean the brother he idolizes.

"You should see my face, man. No wonder all the chics talk to you." He waits. He always does, because his heart says the swollen eyes will open, the cracked lips will smile and the strong voice will reply.

"See, Dean. You're slacking. Cause this is where you say, "most chics don't think a Crayola box is sexy." Get it? Cause my face is four different colors?" Sam lets the silence return, flitting his eyes over the machines that do what his once god-like brother can't manage on his own.

The lull in conversation doesn't do what he wants. It doesn't rouse Dean out of a state of unconscious boredom neither does it warrant a witty response or a repetition of the words. It is in silence that his mind yells what his heart cannot accept. Trusting hope is futile and remaining existence may be spent alone.

Days merge to weeks and weeks morph into months. Time holds no consequence now. It is merely the ticking of the clock monitored by the flipping through of horrible daytime television and evening news. Time has melded into sleepless nights and sparse meals, cool short showers and hard beds. It is the nurse signaling the passing of two hours and then a new day as a different one appears. It's his unshaven father, now bandage free, and antsy, pacing in the tense silence that encompasses the room.

"He looks better without all those stitches, doesn't he, Sammy?" A hopeful attempt to spark a conversation that neither want to have but both crave because stillness leads to thoughts and thoughts to memories. And Sam doesn't want to remember.

"Yeah." He concedes, allowing a reason for his father to continue to ramble and possibly one for him to lash out and vent.

"Just needs to wake up now." So nonchalant and spoken as only a Marine could, Sam thinks as he watches his father's fingers weave their way through his brother's hair that desperately needs a cut. It still baffles him how his father's movements can express such caring but his tone simply can't.

"And if he doesn't?" It's spiteful because he has had too much time to think. Too much time left to his own selfishness that he has considered every avenue of life without his brother. Every moment that would have to be spent with the man that killed him and every possible decision about his life he could and would have to make, utterly and completely alone.

"He will." Firm again. An order. Sam laughs aloud at it's lucidity, because he's not so sure Dean can even hear it so that he can give his "yes sir" response.

Sam doesn't know how much more he can take. It's one thing to sit and watch your still brother but an entirely different thing to wait for the something to happen. A small flutter of the eyelids, a cough, a groan. Anything that resembles the slightest sound from the bed would be appreciated, but is never warranted. And it angers him to some extent because now he thinks of it as Dean's way of punishing him. He's left with dear old dad and a gnawing fear of what the man's lingering stay will bring. What horrors and hurt will come into play now, and the knowledge that there is no way to say Dean from whatever pain is inflicted when it happens and it does happen, just like Sam thought it would.

"I got a call from Joshua." Simple statement, huge implication.

"And?" Why he questions Sam doesn't know. But he isn't going to be the one to say it.

"It's been almost 3 months Sam." Validation. Sam huffs, he isn't giving it. Not now, not ever.

"So?" he makes the decision to press the issue, to make the impending fight count, not for his own sake, but for Dean's.

"He's got a trace on the demon. Thinks if we move now, we may have a chance. Sammy, we have to do this. For Mary, for Jess and for Dean." His father is on his knees in front of him to meet the level where his eyes can hold his son's. His rough and worn hands have Sam's shoulders and a sad smile flickers upon the tired man's face.

"Dean isn't dead." And Sam pushes with all his strength, until his father topples to the floor and he is standing next to his brother's bedside protecting him from a force completely human.

"No, he's helpless." It's sharp, precise, and hits his heart with the same intensity the crazed driver had.

"How can you say that?" His words are laced with hatred and it shows by the fire that ignites his eyes and the protruding jaw line beneath the skin.

"Look at him, Sammy! Look at him! He needs us to finish this fight. That's the only way to end all this." Emotion clouds judgment and within an instant, Sam is fearless.

"No, it isn't! It can't be! If you want to leave, then do it. Don't use me and Dean as your excuse! Don't you do it!" His body shakes from exhaustion and his eyes burn as pent-up anger breaches the surface. He waits for a blow to the face, a sharp push, a enraged reaction but gets something he never expected but has sought for all this time—an embrace.

"It'll be alright, son." The father whispers to his son, and tightens his hold around the young man who sobs at the words. "We'll make it. All of us."

"You don't have to leave." It's muffled, and hidden beneath the cloth of his father's jacket.

"Sam, you know what will happen if I don't. I won't lose my family and I won't let anyone else lose theirs." The mission, the duty of one John Winchester, summed up in that statement.

Sam pulls back and sees something new in his father's eyes. A respect and caring that he's clung to the illusion of for so long, but never thought his family grasped. The vengeful determination replaces it mere seconds later, followed by the sweetest sound either man has heard in months as Dean stirs, and Sam knows for the first time with absolute certainty, his father is right.

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Okay so i tried something new. This has been bugging me since the finale so..yeah. Please let me know what you thought.


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